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Alex Kidd on Miracle Island - Playable Demo


TheMole

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I got 1150 before dying on the bat. :)

 

TheMole, this is really great! Playing on my little TI. It makes me soo happy.

 

The the new .bin burnt nicely and works on my little old TI video chip.

 

For more than a decade, I've played around with retro emulation (as a user). I've been aware of Alex Kidd by name, but never gave it a go.

 

Now the TI can feel some of that platformer love.. The outlines on the main character and dangerous enemies look great. It makes them pop. I get a little sprite ghosting I think when I get to close to the first scorpion, and punch. But given the layered sprites, it doesn't create playability issues like say, burgertime... where invisible pickles kill you.

 

This is truly great!

 

1 thing would be cool ( if this isn't just cause I have my keyboard all 'in-progress' ) if you implemented REDO after the RIP screen :) That would be useful.

 

Having a platformy game like this on the TI... I never imagined... It makes me so happy to see on my real iron! My wife must think I'm crazy.

 

-M@

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attachicon.gifIMG_20151015_205001.jpg

 

2770 lvl 2 :)

 

Well done sir! That's a pretty high score for level 2. I'm guessing you prefer killing the baddies instead of just avoiding them, right? :)

 

Just out of curiosity and to help create a decent difficulty curve for the final game, how long have you played to make it this far? Do you often play platform games?

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In Classic99 when I break the blue spheres the actual destruction animation is displayed in the wrong location

 

You're using the original image that I posted, right? I thought I fixed it in the update I did yesterday, so you can always re-download. Let me know you are using the latest version.

 

I'll be uploading a new version shortly, which I hope fixes sometimes99er's bug and adds 32k memory expansion detection.

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I have landed up here a few times:

post-35226-0-07219700-1444986905_thumb.png

 

I still haven't completed level 1 :)

 

I'm thinking of temporarily reprogramming my XB27 cart so I can try it on hardware, but I'm not sure if it will work if I leave the ATMEGA128 in? Is there an easy way to disable the GROM emulation?

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I have landed up here a few times:

Yeah, that's one of the two 'known bugs' in my original post. I actually know why it's happening, but it's a bit of a pain in the ass to resolve. It's an issue with singed 32bit integers and bit shifting (sign bit getting wiped or duplicated when it shouldn't and vice versa) that is easy to solve from a logical point of view, but it would turn out to be a relatively expensive operation that needs to happen up to 8 times per frame. I've been thinking that it might be better to simply not put any solid blocks in the first 4 rows of the map.

 

I'm thinking of temporarily reprogramming my XB27 cart so I can try it on hardware, but I'm not sure if it will work if I leave the ATMEGA128 in? Is there an easy way to disable the GROM emulation?

Doesn't the console scan for headers in both ROM and GROM when populating the menu? If so, I think not pulling the atmel should result in both ROM and GROM menu items being visible in the module library (in fact, that's how TI BASIC ends up in the list, right?), and selecting Alex Kidd should work then (where selecting XB2.7 would obviously not).

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I have landed up here a few times:

attachicon.gifscreenshot.png

 

I still haven't completed level 1 :)

 

I'm thinking of temporarily reprogramming my XB27 cart so I can try it on hardware, but I'm not sure if it will work if I leave the ATMEGA128 in? Is there an easy way to disable the GROM emulation?

 

GROM is just memory, if the cartridge doesn't use it, it won't interfere. The cartridge you have does not have any interaction between the ROM and the AVR, so you won't have any issues.

 

I don't know if Gazoo left in a way to bypass the autostart feature or if it would conflict - you could test that in emulation. ;)

 

Alternately, since you have to take it apart anyway, if it doesn't work you could just remove the AVR temporarily. ;)

 

Edit: A quick test here in Emulation suggests that it works fine - hold space when starting up or resetting.

Edited by Tursi
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GROM is just memory, if the cartridge doesn't use it, it won't interfere. The cartridge you have does not have any interaction between the ROM and the AVR, so you won't have any issues.

 

I don't know if Gazoo left in a way to bypass the autostart feature or if it would conflict - you could test that in emulation. ;)

 

Alternately, since you have to take it apart anyway, if it doesn't work you could just remove the AVR temporarily. ;)

 

Edit: A quick test here in Emulation suggests that it works fine - hold space when starting up or resetting.

 

Yep, it works in emulation. You can get to Alex Kidd either by bypassing the menu using space or by choosing option E (Disk utilities) from the menu. For some reason XB27 stops working while the other GROMs are still working. Did Gazoo change the XB GROMs to be dependent on the ROM? A shame since a combined XB27/Alex Kidd cart wouldn't be bad at all. :)

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Yep, it works in emulation. You can get to Alex Kidd either by bypassing the menu using space or by choosing option E (Disk utilities) from the menu. For some reason XB27 stops working while the other GROMs are still working. Did Gazoo change the XB GROMs to be dependent on the ROM? A shame since a combined XB27/Alex Kidd cart wouldn't be bad at all. :)

 

All versions of XB are dependent on the ROM. :)

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By reprogramming my XB27 cart I finally got to try Alex Kidd on the hardware, and it plays great, but for the F18A version there is a bit of a problem with screen tearing, which is not there for the 9918A version. It looks like you're changing the scroll register half way down the screen but not at any precise point. It's difficult to describe exactly since you can only get short bursts of scrolling before you hit an obstacle. This isn't visible in JS99er where the screen is drawn all at once.

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By reprogramming my XB27 cart I finally got to try Alex Kidd on the hardware, and it plays great, but for the F18A version there is a bit of a problem with screen tearing, which is not there for the 9918A version. It looks like you're changing the scroll register half way down the screen but not at any precise point. It's difficult to describe exactly since you can only get short bursts of scrolling before you hit an obstacle. This isn't visible in JS99er where the screen is drawn all at once.

 

I went back and looked at the code and can see where I'm making the mistake. I'm working on a fix, but it'll probably have to wait until I'm back in Europe next week. Thanks for the report though!

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After seeing this, I took a few seconds to throw this together. :)

 

attachicon.gifalex_kidd-old_style.png

 

Excellent, I do love the old style labels! I'm not sure which style label I'll be going for for the full game, but I'm torn between a Parsec-style label, a full-color label like the one Omega is using for his cart, or a Pitfall-style wrap-around label (I really like those, but I'm wary of having to sand/grind down the upper sticker inlay ridge on existing cartridge shells).

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I like the one that you already made myself. It's kinda jazzy but still looks good on a shelf with other cartridges. It'll look really cool on vinyl.

 

Here's something close to what a final version with that artwork might look like. I scaled it down to create room for the part number, copyright and "solid state software" text. I also tweaked the background to be a bit closer to that of my Parsec cartridge (I have the desaturated darker purple one, which I like very much).

 

post-33891-0-46039700-1445875427_thumb.png

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